The Monday Miscellany

Typical.  There go Manchester Utd getting outplayed and generally reduced to a quivering wreck in a major final and it has to be the one time this side of doomsday I want them to win the bloody trophy.

Regular readers of TMM will know I took this stance following Barcelona’s ‘victory’ (it was two draws, actually) over Chelsea following a refereeing performance of scandalous incompetence.  So there I was in the Rucking Flanker on Wednesday evening, greeting Lionel Messi’s header, a goal of monumental beauty on any other day of the year, with a grudging ‘Good cross from Xavi’ muttered under the breath all I could bring myself to offer.

Normally I would give myself a hernia leaping for joy when Manchester Utd concede a goal, particularly such a fine goal that dooms them to defeat in a major Final.  This year’s UEFA Champions League tournament has won Barcelona accolades for their footballing ability but it has also brought about a certain element of one commodity that doesn’t become in the world of football: pomposity.

First, from the media.  Yes, let’s ban Didier Drogba for life for the crime of, er, shouting at a referee.  Can’t have people telling a complete dingbat that he’s a complete dingbat.  Not cricket, old chap.  There is an increasing gulf between those who talk about the game in the media, particularly ex-players, and the fans who support in.  Anything that may have escaped Drogba’s lips after the final whistle was positively polite compared to what would have been reigning down from the terraces.  His tirade was an ‘over-reaction’ according to certain self-righteous moralists in the press.  No, an over-reaction would have been punching Tom Henning Øvrebø in the face, from which Chelsea players restrained themselves.  Øvrebø had lost any right to Respect – now a proper noun, if you believe the Football Association – when he chose to abandon the rules of the game as we know them.

Then there’s that tedious air that Barcelona carry.  Mes que un club, indeed?  They have that sense of delusion that they are a unique club (which, ironically, brackets them with countless other clubs, especially here in northern England).  They are a well-supported side who play in stripes with a good stadium in a city a long way away from the metropolitan national capital.  We’ve got one of those in this country too and they got relegated last week.

It is to Barcelona’s credit that they donate the front of their shirt to charity rather than take corporate sponsorship but then so do Aston Villa.  Look a little above the charity’s logo and you’ll see a Nike swoosh, for which the club are paid the gross national product of a small banana republic each year so let’s not pretend they are immune to the vices of commerce.

Barcelona’s triumph also lumbers us with the usual platoon of self-loathers wringing their hands at the shortcomings of English football.  Which is fine, if you’re content to ignore nine out of twelve Champions League semi-final places in the last three seasons having come from English and the fact that the Catalan side’s triumph in Rome was only their second win against Premier League opponents in the last nine attempts.  Of the English ‘Big Four’, only Arsenal have not knocked Barcelona out of Europe in recent seasons.  If they are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen, it was hardly apparent at Stamford Bridge, or at Old Trafford last season.

By all means admire their football, but to pretend they are somehow on a different plane to the rest of us is only one notch below those bores who believe things like football being a metaphor for life, war, sex and MP’s expenses.  Barcelona have not solved world poverty, found a cure for cancer or made North Korea decide that the money spent on nuclear weapons would be put to better use buying rice for its starving population.  They have merely won a football competition.  At times it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that they are just Newcastle with trophies.  The fact is, any club is special if they’re the team you support.

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I write this as England are sealing their place in the U19 European Championship by beating Scotland 2-1 at Brammall Lane.  These competitions may appear to be side-shows but England will only benefit from taking part in four youth tournaments in 2009; the Euros at U17, U19 and U21 level and the U20 World Cup in Egypt.

Tournament football is not like normal football; the living in hotels in foreign countries with matches against unfamiliar opposition are a test for any player.  Then there’s the penalty shoot-outs, the foreign referees with their own take on the rules and playing in a hot summer climate.  Giving England’s young players plenty of experience of these factors in their youth will only be a good thing in the long run and that is why Theo Walcott must resist the caution urged by his club boss Arsène Wenger and go to the Under-21 tournament in Sweden later this month.

***

Yet more trouble for ITV with regard to their FA Cup coverage.  This time people are complaining, would you believe, about the presence of sunlight at Wembley, hardly something within the broadcasters’ control.

Mind you, it might help if Wembley were to revert to the initial higher main camera position at the new national stadium.  Such a lofty view helped give a sense of Wembley’s sheer scale and magnificence.  And while your at it, TV people, do the same at West Ham.

This is an excuse, though, to draw up another improbable list of the five best football stadiums in terms of TV views:

5) Benfica’s Estádio da Luz
4) Manchester City’s Eastlands
3) Berlin’s Olympic Stadium
2) Barcelona’s Camp Nou
1) Villa Park

And the five worst:

5) Highbury
4) West Ham’s Boleyn Ground since 2007
3) Tottenham’s White Hart Lane
2) Osasuna’s stadium; did anyone else see the hand with cigarette yesterday?
1) Bolton’s Reebok Stadium, which gives the impression that the main cameraman is hanging precariously from the stadium roof.

***

It did not matter in the end, as Chelsea won the FA Cup Final anyway, but Florent Malouda deserved better than to have his wonder goal not count because the officials couldn’t tell whether it had gone in or not.  Fiddling about with camera’s on the goal posts, motion sensors and so on is fine and dandy but a simple challenge system, like at the Wimbledon tennis championships, where referees get one chance per match to throw a flag (or some such symbol of protest) and have the fourth referee view a TV replay could solve so many problems.  The notion that fans would miss the ‘talking points’ brought about by bad refereeing errors is nonsense so typical of Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini.

***

What exactly is the definition of a ‘problem position’ for England?  Is it one with fewer than five suitable candidates?  Right-back and goalkeeper are two commonly agreed ‘black holes’ but there really is no shortage.  At right-back, Glen Johnson is doing fine, thank you very much, for club and country and then there are Micah Richards and even a fit-again Gary Neville in back-up.

In goal, Paul Robinson deserves his recall while David James is absent and Ben Foster and Joe Hart merely require more playing time next season, which they will surely get.  Can anybody see Hart willing to stay at Manchester City and play second fiddle to Shay Given?

It is a pity that England’s best goalkeeper, in my opinion, suffers such chronic back problems; if Chris Kirkland could be relied upon throughout a tournament he would surely have a strong case for inclusion in a World Cup squad.